Blogpost was published on June 18, 2024
In 2024, digital signage continues to revolutionize the way businesses communicate with their audiences. The right plugins can significantly enhance the functionality, engagement, and effectiveness of your digital signage solutions. Here’s a list of the top 10 digital signage plugins you need this year to stay ahead of the curve. Note: These are in no particular order as everyone has unique digital signage needs.
Keeping your audience informed about the weather is always useful. Weather plugins integrate real-time weather updates into your digital signage, displaying local forecasts, severe weather alerts, and more. When you use the Play Digital Signage weather plugin, you have the option to choose the city, unit of measure, theme, font, color, language, positioning, and your weather provider, either weatherbit.io or weatherapi.com.
Integrate your social media channels directly into your digital signage. After all, you’ve worked so hard on it and your customers love to see what’s going on! Plugins for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Vimeo allow you to showcase your latest posts, updates, and user-generated content. Plus, with Play Digital Signage you also have options for displaying either Facebook posts or photos and Instagram photos or Instagram hashtags.
Stay current by displaying live news feeds on your digital signage. Plugins like RSS feeds or specific news apps (e.g., CNN, BBC, Reuters) keep your audience informed with the latest headlines and breaking news. Play Digital Signage has three options for RSS feeds right in the editor which you can use to display news. You could also use the Website plugin option to integrate your favorite news site.
Perfect for schools, corporations, and public venues, event calendar plugins keep your audience updated on upcoming events, meetings, and schedules. We all use calendars and it makes a great and useful element in your digital signage. With Play Digital Signage, Google Calendar is already integrated, too.
For large venues like malls, campuses, and corporate offices, interactive map plugins are essential. These plugins help visitors find their way, locate stores, or discover points of interest. Play Digital Signage has already added the Google Maps plugin so it is ready for you to use. It’s also a great way to display your multiple locations or headquarters location. Or use it to show the best route to see the sights around the city. There are a lot of ways to use maps.
A video input plugin enables users to seamlessly integrate content from external sources, such as live TV feeds, directly into their digital signage displays. This feature is particularly beneficial for environments like sports bars, restaurants, or corporate settings where real-time broadcasting can enhance the viewer's experience. By incorporating live TV, businesses can offer dynamic and up-to-date content, such as live news, sports events, or special broadcasts, keeping the audience engaged and informed. Plus, Play Digital Signage already has a video input plugin ready for you to use!
Bring live events, announcements, and broadcasts to your digital signage with live-streaming plugins. The Stream plugin with Play Digital Signage uses industry-leading HLS standard HTTP live streaming so you can display your choice of live feeds. This capability is particularly valuable for venues like conference centers, retail stores, or educational institutions where timely information delivery is crucial. By using the Stream plugin, you can keep your audience engaged with up-to-the-minute content, enhancing their overall experience and ensuring they are always informed and entertained.
Whether it’s counting down to a store's grand opening, a special sale, a product launch, or the start of a live event, Play Digital Signage’s Countdown plugin can create anticipation and excitement among viewers. In corporate environments, it can be used to highlight the time remaining until deadlines, meetings, or project milestones, keeping employees informed and motivated. Schools and universities can utilize the Countdown plugin to build excitement for upcoming holidays, exams, or campus events.
Google Suite plugins for digital signage offer a powerful way to integrate familiar and widely-used tools into your digital displays, enhancing functionality and productivity. With these plugins, which are available in your Play Digital Signage account, you can easily display content from Google Slides, Sheets, and Docs directly on your digital signage screens. For instance, businesses can showcase live updates from project management sheets, rotating slide presentations, or real-time schedules and announcements. Schools and universities can use Google Calendar to display event schedules or class timetables, ensuring that students and staff are always informed of important dates and changes.
Engage your audience with interactive content plugins. These plugins enable touch-screen capabilities, quizzes, polls, and interactive displays. Play Digital Signage offers one of the easiest ways to create interactive content with the Touch plugin. It enables you to make any element touchable. Simply use the plugin and add a touchscreen for instant interactive digital signage.
Using plugins in your Play Digital Signage account is a straightforward process that significantly enhances the functionality and versatility of your digital signage. To get started, log into your Play Digital Signage account and navigate to the dashboard. From there, you can access the 'Plugins' section, where you’ll find a variety of plugins to choose from, including live streaming, Google Suite integration, countdown timers, social media feeds, and more. Select the plugin you want to use, and follow the on-screen instructions to configure its settings and integrate it with your digital signage content.
For example, to display a live TV feed, choose the video input plugin and input the necessary source details. Similarly, to showcase real-time data from Google Sheets, select the Google Sheets plugin and link your Google account. Once configured, you can easily drag and drop the plugin into your content layout, customizing its appearance and placement as needed. By utilizing these plugins, you can create dynamic, interactive, and up-to-date displays that captivate your audience and provide valuable information in real-time.
You can find more help here, too.
In 2024, digital signage continues to revolutionize the way businesses communicate with their audiences, and the right plugins can significantly enhance the functionality, engagement, and effectiveness of these solutions.
From keeping your audience informed about the weather with real-time updates to showcasing dynamic social media feeds, news headlines, and event calendars, these plugins ensure that your content is always fresh and relevant. Interactive maps help visitors navigate large venues, while video input and live streaming plugins allow for seamless integration of live broadcasts and events, enhancing the viewer's experience. The Countdown plugin builds anticipation for upcoming events, and Google Suite plugins streamline the display of familiar productivity tools. Finally, interactive content plugins enable touch-screen capabilities, creating engaging and interactive displays.
By incorporating these top 10 plugins from Play Digital Signage, businesses can stay ahead of the curve, providing a dynamic and engaging digital signage experience that captivates and informs their audience. Sign up for your Play Digital Signage account today to get instant access to these plugins!
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If you haven’t found what you were looking for here, we still have lots to show you! Check out sample digital signage solutions by industry to see how digital signage fits into your business, case studies from those who have come before you to see how they have taken advantage of digital signage, or reach out to us using the live chat below with any questions you might have!
